{"id":3950,"date":"2017-11-26T21:21:51","date_gmt":"2017-11-26T21:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3950"},"modified":"2017-11-26T21:21:51","modified_gmt":"2017-11-26T21:21:51","slug":"generation-x-3-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3950","title":{"rendered":"Generation X #3-9"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are distressingly far behind on\u00a0Generation X<\/em>, so you’ll forgive me if I crash through a bunch of issues in one go in order to catch up. \u00a0These aren’t a single storyline – in fact, it’s pretty much four stories. \u00a0But at the same time,\u00a0Generation X\u00a0<\/em>is settling into a teen soap mode, with different characters taking turns in the driving seat. \u00a0So maybe it’s for the best to look at them in the round, since of this batch, only issue #4 really operates like a team book.<\/p>\n

In fact, despite the title, and the continuing appearance of characters from the original\u00a0Generation X<\/em> (Husk shows up in these issues, to join Chamber and Jubilee), there’s no actual Generation X team here. \u00a0What there is is Jubilee’s school class, who have been singled out as the kids who probably aren’t going to make it as X-Men and will have to be gently channelled into some other sort of productive life, if only anyone could think of what that might be. \u00a0They don’t even get costumes, just school uniforms.<\/p>\n

How much sense that makes varies from character to character. \u00a0Benjamin Deeds, who comes from Brian Bendis’s run on\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em>, changes shape to look like people nearby; Nathaniel Carver senses the history of an object when he touches it; Eye-Boy, from\u00a0Jason Aaron’s\u00a0Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em>, has superhuman perception and is covered in extra eyes. \u00a0These guys are not obviously suited to being superheroes and don’t particularly want to be either; they’re at the school to learn how to control their powers and to take refuge from the world in the meantime. \u00a0Nature Girl, a background character from\u00a0Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em> who never even spoke before this series, has more obviously useful powers to talk to animals and plants, but mainly just wants to commune with nature and ignore everyone else’s agenda. \u00a0Bling!, a Peter Milligan creation who got a bit of page time in Mike Carey’s\u00a0X-Men Legacy<\/em>, has never previously wanted to be a superhero but suddenly gets a lot more agitated about it after being assigned to this group – more because she’s terrified of being sent back to the real world than because she wants to be in this one.<\/p>\n

And then there’s Quentin Quire, easily the marquee character of this bunch, who has top-tier powers and is meant to be a future host for the Phoenix. \u00a0Ostensibly he’s here because he doesn’t have the attitude to be an X-Man, but the fact remains that he’s wildly out of kilter with the rest of the team. \u00a0Of course, that can be a feature rather than a bug; and there’s a nagging suspicion that he’s meant to be here in order to knock some humility into him, rather than because the X-Men serious expect him to drop out.<\/p>\n

These characters come from a range of different books, and by 2017 standards the series is surprisingly keen to pick up on earlier continuity. \u00a0It’s not that surprising to get a reference to Bling!’s previous run-in with Emplate in X-Men Legacy<\/em>, when the book is already following up on M \/ Emplate storyline from the last Uncanny X-Men<\/em> run. \u00a0It’s slightly more unusual to bother picking up on the fact that Quentin was hanging around with Krakoa when he was last seen over in\u00a0Mighty Thor<\/em>. \u00a0It’s less common to dust off a largely forgotten character like\u00a0Face from the previous\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> run. \u00a0But a scene discussing\u00a0Wolverine: Saudade<\/em>, a decade-old one-shot originally published in French?<\/p>\n

Considering the weight of continuity – and the number of its own plot threads being juggled – Christina Strain does well to avoid getting bogged down. \u00a0It’s probably a smart move to keep each story focussed on a few characters and not try to shoehorn everyone into every plot, even if it does make the series slightly bitty.<\/p>\n

So these issues have four main threads. \u00a0There’s a building friendship between Nature Girl and Eye-Boy, as the two outcasts – which is probably the least interesting of the bunch, since even though Nature Girl has more of a personality now, it’s a rather heavy handed one that largely consists of her sardonically lamenting the awfulness of humans. \u00a0Still, she makes a decent foil for Trevor. \u00a0There’s Bling! off on her own trying to decide what she wants to do with her life. \u00a0There’s Jubilee and Chamber trying to track down M\/Emplate, who escapes a run in with the whole group in issue #4 (not a hugely challenging exercise, it must be said) and is now living in the tunnels under Central Park trying to prey on the mutants. \u00a0And there’s a sort of romantic \/ friendship triangle between Quentin, Nathaniel and Benjamin, which has some decent ideas for all three characters; it’s maybe a bit obvious to make Quentin quietly desperate to have someone to hang out with, but you’ve got to moderate him to some extent or he’s going to be intolerable to have around on a monthly basis.<\/p>\n

The book is on stronger territory with character work than with superhero plotting. \u00a0It’s fair enough to set up the idea that M is lurking in the tunnels under Central Park, but to follow it immediately in issue #5 with\u00a0another<\/em> villain living in the tunnels under the park seems repetitive. \u00a0Issues #6-7, where Quentin, Ben and Nathaniel try to stage a heist on Kade Killgore, is stronger, even though the hoax pay-off is a bit underwhelming. \u00a0And issues #8-9, which involve a rescue mission after Krakoa shows up looking for Quentin and causes all sorts of collateral damage, feel a bit directionless; the centrepiece is meant to be Jubilee trapped underground and getting more and more desperate for blood, but putting her with Bling! undermines the scene because even if she lost control, she surely couldn’t bite through Bling!’s skin anyway. \u00a0But there are still good ideas in here, like Shogo being terrified by seeing Jubilee in vampire mode.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of artists here. \u00a0Amilcar Pinna draws issues #3-4 and #8-9; compared with the first couple of issues, he’s growing on me. \u00a0The character work is strong, which is the most important thing here; the sense of place feels a bit flat on the early issues but gets much better towards the end. \u00a0Eric Koda, on issues #6-7, has a slightly lighter touch and a more cartoony quality, which I generally prefer. \u00a0What’s consistent throughout is that this stuff is dense, with a lot of content on each page.<\/p>\n

It does feel at times like an anthology series cutting between several unrelated storylines, but this book is growing on me. \u00a0Hopefully the threads will start to come together in the end, but I’m happy for them to take their time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are distressingly far behind on\u00a0Generation X, so you’ll forgive me if I crash through a bunch of issues in one go in order to catch up. \u00a0These aren’t a single storyline – in fact, it’s pretty much four stories. \u00a0But at the same time,\u00a0Generation X\u00a0is settling into a teen soap mode, with different characters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3950"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3952,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3950\/revisions\/3952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}